Britain to sanction Russia 'hard' immediately, Johnson says

LONDON: Britain will immediately impose hard economic sanctions on Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of troops to two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday.

"We will immediately institute a package of economic sanctions," Johnson told reporters.

The sanctions, he said, would be "targeted not just at entities in Donbass and Luhansk and Donetsk, but in Russia itself - targeting Russian economic interests as hard as we can."

Putin will find he has "gravely miscalculated" if Russia invades Ukraine, Johnson said, adding that Moscow appeared to be bent on a full scale invasion.

Johnson chaired a meeting of Britain's national emergency security committee early on Tuesday.

"I think that the tragedy of the present situation is that President Putin has surrounded himself with like-minded advisors who tell him that Ukraine is not a proper country. And I think that he is going to find that he has gravely miscalculated," Johnson told reporters after the meeting.